Oxymoron – 1901 Census v National Archives

The Department of Tourism, Culture and Sport doesn’t seem to be able to see the big picture. The launch of the 1901 Census by the National Archives of Ireland was a tremendous success. Minister Hanafin tells us so on the Department website. She has travelled to New York and London to launch the census as part of a wider tourism initiative using archives and genealogy as a carrot to attract visitors – ‘the launch of the Census returns is a boost to Tourism Ireland’s marketing campaign ‘This is the Year to Come Home’ which will focus on 10 million Americans of Irish descent’…

However, the National Archives of Ireland is, as the Sunday Tribune indicates, in ‘danger of Irish history being lost due to poor storage of archives’. The Director of National Archives of Ireland, David Craig, has made public his concerns over the inadequate space (‘no longer space to take in vital historical documents from government departments and organisations’), unsuitable conditions (‘hundreds of boxes of nation­al documents remain sealed and stored on palettes in the old Jacob’s biscuit factory in Dublin which is unsuitable in temperature and has begun to let in rainwater’) and non compliance with legislation regarding acquisition of governmental records (‘Government departments are now being instructed not to send their documents in to the archives, despite a rule instructing they send them in each and every year. “There is actually legislation in relation to the national archives which requires that we take in these documents every year and we are being forced to break the legislation because there is just no suitable storage for them anymore,” said Craig).

The oxymoron is there – the government promotes a valuable resource while neglecting the future of that very same resource.